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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23550760">The Inn at Sanctum</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDangus/pseuds/TheDangus'>TheDangus</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work, The World of Albog</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bed &amp; Breakfast, Dungeons &amp; Dragons References, Monsters, No Dungeons &amp; Dragons Knowledge Required, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Mythology, Original Universe, Other, Taverns, The World of Albog - Freeform, Wholesome, Worldbuilding, magic beasts, magic items</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:14:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23550760</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDangus/pseuds/TheDangus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Elliana Zemes (She goes by Elly) had stumbled through life. Constantly on the move, her clumsiness and being a magnet for accidents got her kicked from job after job, and she only ever stayed on because she was so good at covering up her errors by any means necessary. But her silver tongue and conning skills could only take her so far until eventually someone noticed a peculiar amount of lost or damaged items, and the jig would be up. But now, bumbling along in the back of a wagon, a new life awaits her. However, the fates have different plans for her, hidden in the forest.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>None</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Bump in the Road</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The first chapter in what will hopefully be an ongoing series, but I am writing it in part thanks to the extra time from quarantine. The first few chapters will come out pretty quick and might be on the short side as I get the story going, but from there, I'll have to see how often I post and hopefully they'll get a bit longer. I hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            Elliana Zemes woke up as the wagon moved from the well-trodden highway onto the rougher backcountry road that would take her to a new life. Then the rumblings from the road caused a book to fall from the stacks and onto her face. How typical. Lifting the guidebook from her face, she placed it back on the box it had rested atop, now in a much safer location. The book was hers, but all the crates were property of the merchant she had hitched a ride with. She didn’t have anything except what could fit in her pack, and she doubted that she could afford anything she was traveling with, let alone the boxes themselves. She was only able to convince the merchant to let her on by lying that she could provide protection, while she flashed a sword in its hilt. What the merchant didn’t know is that the rest of the sword was very much broken off, and only a small amount of blade remained attached. But he didn’t need to know that. Besides, the route they were taking was rather safe, and news of highway robberies and monster attacks had been on the decline. Guess the robbers were finding jobs and the monsters were… at least somewhere else. Shaking off the thoughts of being attacked, she turned forward towards the merchant behind the reigns. “About how much longer until we’re in Calcero?”</p>
<p>“We’re still about two hours from our stop in Leafhome, then it’s three hours from there. And if you’re done sleeping, I need you to be on your guard, the wood we’re going into is shaded and can hide all kinds of nasty sorts.”</p>
<p>“Sure thing.” On her guard, yeah right. She might as well act the part, so she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up. Five hours was a lot of time to plan her next move. She had no money, minimal food and water, not many skills, was quite clumsy, and <em>very</em> accident prone. She only kept many of her jobs because she was so good at covering up her costly blunders by any means necessary, until eventually someone noticed a peculiar amount of lost or damaged items, and the jig would be up. To be fair, all that misdirection had given her great conning skills and a fantastic silver tongue. But, no one would know of that here, and as long as she could keep things in line, she was sure it would all work out. She would probably start at an inn or tavern, as she did fairly often. Never the guard though, as she learned very early that clumsiness and sharp things don’t mix. All that was left was to get there, so, so very slowly.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>But life was never that easy, was it?</p>
<hr/>
<p>“You HACK!”</p>
<p>“Look, it’s not my fault you’re driving is terrible, they never would have been able to surround us if you hadn’t hit every pothole in our path and gotten the wheels stuck in the mud!”</p>
<p>“I paid you to defend me, and what do you do at the first sign of danger? You throw a fair chunk of my cargo out of the wagon as a, ‘distraction for the bandits’ and then start damaging the wagon itself by kicking the wheels and its side!”</p>
<p>“Okay, a few things. One, you never <em>really</em> paid me, you simply let me on for the ride. Two, I’d hardly count two crates as a, ‘fair chunk’. Three, better two crates than your entire stock. And four, I was smacking the side to get it dislodged from the mud so you would stop panicking and start LEAVING. Seeing as how most of your stuff is still intact, your wagon is only minimally damaged, and both of us have our <em>lives</em>, I’d say I’ve done a fantastic job, especially considering it would have been me versus five bandits if I’d fought. Really, you should be thanking me for doing such excellent work.”</p>
<p>“Well, despite that being what I apparently ‘<em>should</em>’ be doing, that’s not the course of action I intend to take. I am dropping you off at Leafhome and finding some real help. I’ll consider not reporting you to the guards there as your thanks.”</p>
<p>Just great. She wasn’t even going to be close to Calcero, instead she was going to get dropped in some backwater town in the middle of the Strumon Forest. Small towns like that were the worst for her as well. In cities like Calcero, she could hop from neighborhood to neighborhood, sometimes even block to block, without anyone hearing about her previously. But a small town like Leafhome was a trap. One screw up, and word of her failing would spread through town like a plague, making it almost impossible to get out. Unfortunately, there was no way she would be able to persuade the merchant to let her continue on. From the sound of it, she would be lucky to not be in a cell by day’s end. So she did what she did best, and started to plan how to disappear.</p>
<p>She had spent enough time in forests similar to this one to know generally how to survive for a while at least. She made sure to put the guidebook that had fallen on her face before into her pack. “A General Guide to Surviving as an Adventurer: Finding the Bare Necessities in Any Environment” by Brooke Brooks. Despite the silly pseudonym, it had saved her life more times than she could count. Whenever she got run out of town, she was able to scrounge up enough food and water to survive until she was safe. She never thought it would come in handy <em>before</em> getting to a town, but today was just full of surprises.</p>
<p>Glancing about, she looked through some of the cargo that had been thrown loose during travel and the altercation. Her ride seemed to be a general merchant of some kind, as there were basic materials scattered throughout. Thinking quickly, she quietly grabbed the essentials and slipped them into the bag. A couple rations, an extra waterskin, some rope, and a dagger. Ready to jump out, two things grabbed her eyes: a rather unassuming pair of black leather gloves, and a pair of stone earrings. They were odd pieces considering the rest of the merchant’s cargo, but she was already stealing so, in for a penny, in for a pound. Putting both them on, she tightened her pack around her chest, and waited for the merchant to hit another pothole (which he seemed to be doing more often after the bandits). The back of the cart jolted once more, and in the noise of the clattering, she rolled out onto the road, turned, and headed into the trees. She paused just off the road to look for signs the merchant had seen her leave, but he was quickly around a bend and out of sight. Turning back to the forest, she peered into the darkness to see if anything had noticed her arrival, but the underbrush was silent and unmoving. Despite that, there was something of note. Only a couple meters into the forest there seemed to be a path that led deeper in. Whether it was made by animals, monsters, or bandits wasn’t really of import at the moment. She needed to put distance between her and the road, lest the bandits were following, or the merchant reported her. Knife in hand, she cut through some greenery and set upon the new course.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Ghost Town</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Elliana has just had her plans upended by her usual luck and is now trekking through the Strumon Forest on a path to nowhere. But just a couple hours before nightfall, she crests a ridge and sees something surprising. Below her was a ghost town, abandoned by people and reclaimed by the forest. A great place to hide out, but what could be there lying in wait?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>            The new course sucked. The humidity had her clothes drenched in sweat, the bugs had her skin itching, and the path had her legs aching. On the bright side, her stomach was somewhat full thanks to some berries and fruit she had got along the way, but that was about it. It had only been three hours since she rolled out of the cart and started on this path in the woods, but it felt like it had been days. The sun was only a couple hours from the horizon, and its low angle had turned the forest into an even more eerie place than it already was. The strange bird and insect noise had put her on edge, and now it was even worse in the orange-tinted gloom. But despite her fears, she trekked onward in hope of finding some manner of safety amid the trees. It seems only when life had given her a full day’s worth of hope-crushing and irritation would her situation improve.</p><p> </p><p>Turning the corner around a particularly dense set of trees atop a rise, she looked out and caught her breath. There, at the bottom of the hill, was a town forgotten. Details were hard to make out from her vantage point, but it seemed as though the path had led her to a small ghost town partially reclaimed by the forest. It was an exciting development, but also cause for concern. If one path led there, it would stand that there were others, and potentially other travelers. Bandits, goblins, orcs, squelchy things with tentacles, who knew what could be lying in wait in those wooden ruins? Then again, it’s not like she had much of a choice. The sun was close to kissing the canopy, and it was best to explore a dangerous new place while she could still see unaided. Hiking her bag up on her back, she quickly set about navigating down to the ghost town.</p><p> </p><p>With her downhill bearing it didn’t take long before she arrived on the town’s outskirts. She was right about the paths, as hers joined up with a few more, combining into what seemed to be the main road that cut through the middle of town. Keeping low, she approached off to the side of the larger path, creeping towards the closest buildings. They seemed devoid of  lookouts or any other traces that someone was there. She stood using a large wooden sign as cover, and gave the town another look over. Satisfied, she turned to the sign to read it. It was covered in moss and scarred with lichen, so she did her best with the knife to scrape off what she could. Taking a step back after sufficiently clearing it of the debris, she frowned. She had picked up some knowledge in a couple of languages like dwarven and elvish, but this sign was in something she had never seen before. Even the letter structure had no similarity or roots that traced to a language she at least had heard of. Curious, she brought her hand up to the sign and went to trace the letters with a finger. It was then that she received a great shock.</p><p> </p><p>Upon touching the first letter, the point of contact on her glove glowed a soft gold. Recoiling in shock, she quickly looked at the glove, but the shine simply faded away. Even more intrigued, she pressed her finger against the letter again, and as before, there was a soft glow. She followed the carven symbols with her hand, filling them with light. Wherever her hand dragged upon the unknown text, the glow persisted, until she had filled the whole word with light. It was then, upon lifting her hand and stepping back, that the real surprise came. The light glowed somewhat brighter, before flashing intensely. Blinking the spots from her eyes, she turned back to the sign, and her mouth fell agape. The letters had twisted and curled into the familiar Common script she knew, and so read: WELCOME TO SANCTUM.</p><p> </p><p>“Sanctum?” she whispered, before quickly clapping her mouth over her hand, eyes wide. It had been quiet, but she had let slip a noise that would let any careful listener know she was there. Standing very still, her eyes darted from building to building, but there was still no movement among the ruins. Letting go a sigh of relief, she took a deep breath and headed into town, as the letters on the sign faded into their original positions. Creeping forward, she drew the knife she had stolen and held it before her, ready for a fight. There was reason to believe that it might happen, as she could just barely hear shuffling coming from around the corner of a building ahead. Dashing across empty alleyways, she pressed up against the wall of the aforementioned building. There was indeed some manner of sound on the other side of the corner, and she carefully shimmied along the wall towards it. Not carefully enough, however, for just as she was getting close, her foot caught a loose board, and she cried out, tumbling forward into the alley. Complete panic gripped her as she knew she was now in full, defenseless view of whatever manner of danger lurked in the building’s shadow. Quickly after hitting the ground, she rolled to the side so she could see an attack coming. Bringing the knife up, she looked to see… the back end of a deer, startled by her entrance, already bounding into the woods. It was hard to describe how she felt then, but it was surely at least a mix of relief and annoyance. And judging from the lack of activity despite the commotion, Sanctum was truly deserted. Picking herself up from the ground, she hastily dusted her clothes off, and set into the town proper.</p><p> </p><p>Seeing as how the area was desolate, she dropped her bag on the step of the closest building and decided to get a good look at the buildings to find if one might prove sturdy enough to hide out in for a few days. The buildings were all wood, and covered in numerous kinds of greenery: moss hung from the gutters, vines scaled the banisters, and ivy lined the walls. The wood itself was damp, but had yet to rot, at least completely. Going inside the buildings she thought were structurally safe enough, she was surprised to find the insides were usually very much intact. Tables and chairs stood upright, adorned with wear from regular use long ago. Many of the panes of glass, both inside and out, were unshattered. Paintings and fine decorations had not even been touched except by dust. There were no signs of looters, squatters, or even bored teenagers who might wish to get up to some trouble, and they usually went out of their way to do that. It was simply as if the whole town’s population had vanished in an instant. However, no matter how many signs of life the town lacked, there was something entirely unnerving about it. The architecture was… <em>off</em>. There really was no other way to put it. A fair number of the buildings were built just a bit too large or small for the average person to use comfortably, and the decor matched. Some places went even further, and had one or two even stranger pieces of furniture that would only suit those of a rather strange body type. It gave her chills that lingered as she picked through the ruins like a vagrant Goldilocks.</p><p> </p><p>After ambling from building to building on the main street, she had nearly gone through the whole town. But there, at the opposite end of the road she arrived on was a building that was so comparatively normal, it seemed alien for the location. The lower level was made of a dark wood, but was mostly taken up by large windows, thick, dyed, and supported by thin iron crosshatching. The door almost seemed like it was hewn from a single tree, but beautifully stained a golden brown. It was inlaid with black iron hinges, handle with thumb latch, and extra adornments. At eye level in the center was a bronze door knocker, fashioned into the shape of a leaf with a handle forged into a branch, somehow shiny as the day it was made. But the strangest part was the trimming, which was of the same stained wood in a simple pattern, until right above the door. In that spot was instead a carving of a single, closed eye. It was so detailed that she felt it might open if she got too close. Hanging above that was a sign, decorated with a carving that resembled a wolf’s mouth, open wide and full of teeth. The upper level was much simpler. It was also wood, of a lighter staining, with evenly spaced smaller windows that looked like they could open, each with their own shutters. The roof too was unassuming, made of stone or clay shingles, but not a single one was missing. This study of the roof led her eyes to discover another closed eye, carved under one of the eaves. The odd carvings and normal architecture at odds with the rest of the town put her on edge. With the appearance of its edifice and prominent positioning on the main road, she figured it was likely a tavern or inn when it was in operation. Although, with the condition it was currently in, she figured it might as well <em>still</em> be in operation. But there was no light through the windows and no warmth from its walls. Ever cautious, she quickly went back and grabbed her bag before approaching the door. Listening one last time for anyone inside, she grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.</p><p> </p><p>Peering inside, she was right on two accounts. Not only was it an inn, but it was much like the rest of the town, empty and untouched, except for one detail that put her on alert; the dust was not uniform. There was a path on the floor and some spots were mostly clear of dust, implying frequent use, and the dust that was there had an unusually high amount of animal hair. This meant secondly, someone, or something had been here <em>very</em> recently. However, it was somewhat confusing that if there was no one inside, why did they leave the door unlocked? Obviously, there was no one in the town at the moment, but bandits and animals undoubtedly wandered through as she had, so why wouldn’t the occupant want to close up to keep them out? Quietly shutting the door behind her, she poked her head into every room she could find, and yet, there was assuredly no one there. There wasn’t even any equipment or personal belongings in the whole building besides the furniture and a single broom. Great, the only thing here was a broom and yet the whole place was <em>still</em> dusty. Picking it up in her hands, she walked with it back to the main dining room and laid it on a table with her bag before continuing on to the door. She carefully peeked out, giving the overgrown town one last look over before pulling her head inside and sliding the lock shut. If they <em>were</em> to come back, they would need a key, and seeing as how it hadn’t been locked before, she hoped they didn’t.</p><p> </p><p>Absentmindedly picking up the broom, she began sweeping the floor as she thought about her next move. The best course of action seemed to be just to stay here for a few days in case the merchant had told the nearby town about her. That way if she had been reported, they would hopefully forget about her by then, or at least stop caring. Then, she would go into back to Leafhome proper and scrounge up enough money to get a ride to Calcero where she could disappear into the populace. For now she just needed to make sure she found enough to eat, while not getting eaten herself in a weird ghost town hidden in the middle of the forest. The planning had made her so out of it, that it took quite a few moments to realize she was being spoken to. “Excuse me my dear, but I do believe you’ve missed a spot.”</p><p> </p><p>She wheeled around, broom in both hands, ready to give the intruder a face full of bristles and dust bunnies, only to find there was no one in the room. “It’s just that it's been so long since anyone swept up the corner by the stairs, I’d really appreciate if you could clean it out.”</p><p> </p><p>Pinpointing the source of the female voice, she nearly fainted, as it seemed to be coming from the main door. The eye above it had opened, and was looking right at her. “Oh I’m sorry, are you new here?”</p><p>The inn was talking to her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>What do you know, two chapters in and we can roll credits! Jokes aside, tune in later as Elliana gets to know the person(?) she so rudely barged in on.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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